


Labor Relations

by daisydiversions



Series: Fiscally Speaking [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, financial crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-08
Updated: 2008-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-10 02:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisydiversions/pseuds/daisydiversions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, god," Merlin actually weeps. "Did you really just call Bernanke's mother a cocksucker?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Labor Relations

It's just after the whole AIG thing has begun to settle, when the public has begun to lull back from hysterical mob status to lazy, disgruntle individuals that harbor completely unjustifiable fears of spontaneously losing their homes, despite only ever missing that one payment right after their eldest daughter's wedding, that Arthur well and truly fucks up.

"Oh, god," Merlin actually weeps. "Did you really just call Bernanke's mother a cocksucker?"

Arthur shrugs with a strictly carefree ambiance that he has no right to possess this close to a long painful death, likely from a length of rope and a steep drop into Times Square. "I didn't say anything that isn't true."

"And accusing labor unions of being Communists? Really?" 

Maybe they’d get lucky and be set to jail for trying to incite a riot. With the travel restrictions to Cuba loosening, his mother could visit him at Guantanamo Bay. Maybe she could even bring his Blackberry. He’d like that.

“Hey!” Arthur snaps irritably, and Merlin holds onto a very small hope that he may actually get a logical response out of Arthur sometime before Arthur dismisses him to go pry the PR director out from under her desk, so he can throw her to the wolves. He holds no hope of Arthur feeling regret or accepting any responsibility; Wall Street hadn’t seen a Miracle like that since the Dow began to nosedive. “That check card legislation is undemocratic. Why do I bother to give these campaign contributions if Congress doesn’t even vote how I tell them?”

“Oh yeah,” Merlin agrees blandly, thumbing a tweet on his Blackberry about how much he hates Arthur’s stupid face, “that sounds real democratic to me. Why don’t you sue them?”

“I may just do,” Arthur said consideringly, and looks, oh god, like he may actually be calling Morgana from his iPhone to draw up the paperwork. Working a quick cost-benefit analysis of preemptively cutting off that line of thought and having to deal with Arthur’s sulk, versus attempting a hasty exit to escape the inevitable screaming match if Arthur gets through and then having to hear it from both of them later, Merlin is spared the decision when his twitter informs him that Arthur thinks his face is stupid, especially his Obama-ears.

Merlin huffs and shoots a withering glance at where Arthur is failing to hide a smile. “I’ll have you know, I had these ears long before they were Presidential.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Arthur allows, waving him off and lounging back into the massaging swivel chair of bless that Merlin that resolutely does not have bizarrely hot and completely inappropriate fantasies of Arthur fucking him in. “Now go make the media girl do her job.”

“Her name is Gwen and if she fixes this, you’re going to have to buy her a house in Fairfield or marry her or something,” Merlin informs him in as long suffering a manner as he could manage. 

“Merlin,” Arthur says darkly, rolling his head back against an apparent crick in his neck to reveal a particularly lickable expanse of throat, “if it got the press to shut up, I’d marry you.”

Ducking his head, Merlin does not comment that perhaps it wasn’t Bernanke's mother that was the cocksucker after all, but just barely. He flees to Gwen’s office for what will irrefutably be a mighty battle of the weepy. 

Gwen, as it happens, can actual do her job, and quite well. Being close to unfamiliar with this notion, Merlin is sort of embarrassingly surprised when Gwen, after Merlin has talked her away from the choke hold she’d had on a rather intimidating office plant and into the press room, smoothly explains what Arthur had meant to say and actually makes it seem like the inner workings of a sane, law abiding business man and not Arthur the nut job, whom Merlin hates and loves to hate and hates to love. And, you know, that other thing maybe a little.

When it’s clear the press’ plans to roast Gwen over a spit aren’t going to pan out and even Nimueh, who despite all of Arthur assertions otherwise does not write for ‘The Daily Worker’, looks mollified, Arthur, having obviously been watching all along over the live feed in his office, texts him inquiring after the average down payment in Fairfield given the current housing market.

Merlin gleefully links him to the most obscenely priced reception halls in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Iowa instead.


End file.
